


Undercurrent

by Eridell



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Briefly Mentioned Strike Team Delta, Character Study, Flashbacks, Headcanon, Implied Relationships, Medical Trauma, Nightmares, Phil Coulson's Cellist, Triggers, post-death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:17:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridell/pseuds/Eridell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But even a man as emotionally and morally strong as Phil Coulson will tremble under the weight of the deepest kind of betrayal. And unfortunately, from where he stands on the edge of the murky, ominous pit that is his own dreams, silence is all he has for solace.</p><p>Major spoilers for Agents of SHIELD episode 1x11 "The Magical Place" and the explanation of Tahiti.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undercurrent

**Author's Note:**

> This whole ficlet was basically me trying to cope with the trauma of learning about Coulson's revival. Seriously, I didn't sleep the night the episode aired and my Coulson RP muse died until I wrote this out.
> 
> Trigger warnings: emotional/mental instability, needles and medical experimentation, death ideation.

It started off as a restless whisper, a fleeting face he only caught sight of in that split second before his eyes opened and he came rushing back to reality after a restless night’s sleep. And after it was gone, he couldn’t even chase it. It faded with his dreams and was miles away before he even had the functions to reach after it.

He almost caught it once. His head fills itself with the familiar sea breeze and scent of fresh linen like it always did, soft, deft fingers under his neck finding all the right spots until all he could do was let his eyes slide shut and relax into the contact. This was perfect. This was calming and slow and just what his addled nerves needed to mellow out and settle down after-

And then he opens his eyes.

The face above him shifted, transformed into something clothed in medical cotton and haloed by a blinding white light. The edges of his vision still cling to ocean blue, but that blinding halo drowns it all out until a thrum of panic rings through his chest and then it’s all over. The white snaps to black as he blinks, staring and gasping toward the dark ceiling of his room with a hand clutched over the seam of skin a shade too pale for the rest of his chest and his nails dug sharp into the epicenter of his panic.

A few short breaths. A heavy blink. A swipe of his forehead to clear it of the film of sweat that clings to his brow and then it’s over. It’s gone. All he has are those rolling waves of peaceful azure and a single terrifying, heart-wrenching, soul-piercing moment of cold white light.

As the months went on, the face persisted. Eventually he’d come to expect that face, the only thing that didn’t seem… mechanical in that calming wave of warmth. The peace was becoming unsettling the more it rushed into his bones, and the nights he’d come to lean against for stability shook the very foundations he stood on with every passing dream.

The nights he didn’t dream at all were more welcome than ever. All he yearned for was a night where he didn’t have to dream, didn’t have to wake up grasping for that ghost that always slipped through his fingers like a wisp of smoke. But he was getting so close. He didn’t need to see anymore than he had to know he was coming closer to touching that invisible wall every time he forced himself through the fog. He could almost smell that sterilizer that hospitals seemed to keep as air freshener, could taste the acrid copper on the back of his tongue, could feel something deep in his core stirring like a dormant beast struggling against its restraints for that faint sliver of light just beyond its claw’s reach.

And then he found himself in the desert.

Laying himself voluntarily on the table was the easy part. Fighting them off for control over his own head was even easier. Phil Coulson was no wimp. He was an Army Ranger, a SHIELD agent who specialized in interpersonal relations and large-scale field operations. Those chumps had no idea what they were doing or how to get him to crack.

But Raina did, and it only took the mention of one soul to bring him to his knees. Her. The one person that remained a bastion of hope for a dream he didn’t dare let himself have. The one soul who didn’t see him as anything more than a good-natured man with a peculiar interest in war memorabilia and high-end bourbon. The one woman who would happily let him into her house at two in the morning for a glass of wine and a drowsy game of catch-up before they dozed off hand-in-hand with the same smile sitting on their faces from that last sleepy, half-focused kiss.

He didn’t agree to the final theta wave session because he wanted to know. He didn’t do it to prove a point to Fury and SHIELD and everyone else who had put him through hell after over a decade of steadfast service that had ultimately led him directly to his downfall. He did it because he literally had nothing left to lose. His only hope of a quiet life was gone, snatched away from him and shattered into a hundred irreparable pieces that scattered in the wind as he stood rooted to the spot and watched them slide away.

It took him a few hours after laying on the table again to piece it all together, and even then the memories came in garbled flashes: that same haloed light, voices shouting on either side of him, and his reflection directly above his face echoing down an image that would forever burn itself into his brain. How ironic that it was his very brain that burned that hole. But it wasn’t just the very, very fundamentally wrong image of his own brain that seared through him with that sickening flash of fear.

It was the needles. There were too many to catch and they moved too fast to count, but he felt every single one of them as they pressed forwar dat rapid-fire speed. Each one prickled at something different: his hand. His thigh. His vision. His fleeting memories of that rain-soaked face in Portland. The jagged tear that still laid open and raw across his back. His mouth was moving of its own accord, a broken litany that echoed in the chaos of the surgical room with a desperate plea that no one, not even the shadowed faces pacing almost out of his range of vision, seemed ot heed.

“ _Let me die. Please. Please, let me die. Let me die._ ”

Every time he closes his eyes now, those faces haunt him more than anyone else. They were supposed to be his supervisors, his confidants, his friends… and even they had let it happen. Worse, they had authorized it. Days upon days upon hellish days of fiery pain and agonizing waiting in between. And all they had to say was they “had to”. They had to let him suffer. They had to ignore his pleas. They had to press on with their own initiative against all morals and ethics and outright desperation to make them end it and let him just die.

He isn’t angry. Fury doesn’t do anything without good reason. Even through a traumatic reawakening like the one that keeps him up nearly every night, he still has faith in that. Fury wouldn’t have put him through that unless he really needed to. The Director of SHIELD wouldn’t move Hell and Earth to save the life of just another one of his agents unless he had a solid reason.

…Right?

That’s the hardest part of this sudden clarity. The uncertainty. The unanswered questions. The lingering sense that even now that he knows everything he still knows absolutely nothing. He can take the solutide that comes from carrying knowledge with this much weight. With as much weight as he carries on his shoulders on a daily basis, this is nothing. He never talked about his cellist, he never talked about the quiet nights he spent with his assets, he never talked about the sudden realization that he was dying. He can handle never talking about this.

But even a man as emotionally and morally strong as Phil Coulson will tremble under the weight of the deepest kind of betrayal. And unfortunately, from where he stands on the edge of the murky, ominous pit that is his own dreams, silence is all he has for solace.


End file.
